Kenya Stop #1 - Elerai Camp in Amboseli Nat'l Park (Day 2)

 As per usual on safari, we started before sunrise.  This is because it is cooler and the animals are more active.  We got up in the dark, flashed our big bright flashlight up the hill to request an escort and went to breakfast.  As it has been everywhere else, the food was outstanding.  Your choice of fruits, cereals, muesli, yoghurt, eggs, sausages, bacon and more.  We're all expecting to gain weight.  It is so good.

Oh crap!  We have to make that hour long drive back from the conservancy to Amboseli Nat'l Park.  I'm going to bring that up every time, because I grew to hate it.  The other three were better about it and I didn't gripe too much to them (I say), but I'm going to tell you its a bad road and a bad way to start or end a day.

To some degree, we repeated Day #1, except that we didn't spend much time in the really dry parts of the park and much more time around the swampy sections.  That means more animals and more variety.  It was incredible.  I have hundreds of pictures, Sue has hundreds of pictures, John and Diane have hundreds of pictures.  Seriously, we can just bury you in pictures.  

Some samples?  Sure.  How about one of the Big Five, the Cape Buffalo.

Or Sue's favorite, the warthog.  Pumba for you Disney fans.  As an aside, Pumba is taken from Swahili.

Pumba are really cute when they run and I'll try to show you that later in our Kenyan stay.

Lots more wildebeest.  All day long, we saw these guys.  They look a bit stressed.

The wildebeest might look stressed and the zebras might not . . . 

But apparently the zebras are the most stressed animal in the park.  We saw dead zebra ALL OVER the place.  We don't get the impression that they were killed, either.  Just dropped over from dehydration and the drought.  And they always look plump, even though they are suffering.  And you thought stripes were slimming.  It doesn't work.  They always look plump.  Even right before they die.

The drought comment from above brings me back to the swampy nature of big areas of the park.  Those swamps are all fed by underground seepage / runoff from Mt. Kilimanjaro.  Remember when I said that with global warming, it probably won't have snow in the dry season in about 10 years?  If you want to go to Amboseli, go now.  Don't wait.

There were greater and lesser flamingos.   In terrific numbers.

Vultures were having a field day, especially with all of those zebra carcasses littering the countryside.

The big guy waiting with the vultures is a Marabou Stork.  It seems odd, but they were always waiting on the vultures to move on from the carcass.  They are clearly bigger than vultures.  Why do they have to wait?  Because evolution is strange.  These big, bad storks can't actually tear meat from the carcass.  They have to wait for the vultures to soften things up.

Sharing this pic of a stork and a vulture cooling off because it sort of shows their wing spans.  The stork has a wing span of about 7 - 10 feet, while the vulture is only about 5 feet.

Not sure what this is, but there were so many colorful birds and I just needed to share one.  If you can't tell, he's big.  Nearly a meter (I'm so international !)

Let's do another elephant, just because we can.  Yes, she is wading through the swamp.

We headed back to camp after lunch.  You know what is coming, don't you?

We have to make that hour long drive back from the Amboseli Nat'l Park to our conservancy.  Uggh, its a lot of dust and a lot of bumps (rough road).  But we get there.

And we request that they turn on the watering hole.  It works like a charm.  Today, the elephants take their turn first.  They always take their turn first.  They are the biggest, the baddest and they get first crack at anything they want.

This is a great show, so everyone has an adult beverage to pass the time.  Make mine a Tusker beer.  Seems appropriate, right?  When the elephants have had their fill, its the giraffes' turn.  Yesterday, the zebra had round 2, but today its giraffe time.

When the water ran out, the show was over and they all went about their business.

In the evening, we went for a nature walk.  Right from camp.  That means no long drive to the park.  Its a winner!

Actually, the nature walk was probably Joseph's shining moment.  It is not that he was bad, but he wasn't Gabriel (our Inyati guide).  But Joseph's explanations of animal tracks, vegetation, insects and everyone's favorite . . . dung identification . . . was actually very interesting.  And it ended with dinner.  And wine.  and then some more wine.  Good stuff.